Tagged: Opinion 2/13

In these times when “strong headwinds” are blowing against the European culture of fundamental rights and the rule of law (see P. Pinto de Albuquerque), the principles of mutual recognition and mutual trust on which judicial cooperation in the EU is based have come under pressure. The CJEU and the ECtHR are increasingly called upon to address the phenomenon of “rule of law backsliding” and to strongly defend these common values.

The recent preliminary reference submitted by the High Court of Ireland in case C-216/18L.M. fits into such trend. It concerns the possibility to refuse the execution of three European Arrest Warrants issued by Polish courts against an individual, L.M., on account of the potential violation of the right to a fair trial ensuing from the latest controversial reforms of the judiciary in Poland. According to the Commission’s reasoned proposal to activate for the first time in history the procedure of Art. 7 TEU, which recently found the endorsement of the European Parliament calling on the Council to take action swiftly, the said reforms resulted in a breach of the rule of law due to, essentially, a lack of sufficient guarantees of external independence of the judiciary at all levels. Even though the application of the Framework Decision on the EAW can be suspended only after a Council’s decision under Art. 7 (1) TEU has been adopted (Recital 10 of the Framework Decision on the EAW), it is nonetheless inevitable that such circumstances may – from the viewpoint of the person subject to an EAW issued by Poland – entail a serious risk of breach of the right to a fair trial. The CJEU now has thus the opportunity to clarify whether an alleged lack of judicial independence amounts to a breach of the right to a fair trial that calls for the refusal to execute an EAW, as an exception to the principle of mutual trust.

A week has passed since the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rendered the landmark Achmea judgment. A number of posts analyzing the judgment have already appeared in the legal blogosphere (see e.g. here, here, here and here). Much of this commentary has focused on describing the Court’s reasoning and on analyzing the judgment’s broader implications. Most commentators agree that there was nothing unexpected in the Court’s conclusion that the arbitration clauses in the less than two hundred intra-EU BITs have, as the Court put it, an ‘adverse effect on the autonomy of EU law’ (para. 59).

The judgment’s reception has also varied in accordance with the view one has of the underlying purposes of investment treaties – do they promote the international rule of law or narrow corporate interests at the expense of the public interest? Accordingly, those critical of investment treaties and arbitration have welcomed the judgment, whereas the proponents of investment treaties have argued that the judgment leads to less ‘rule of law within the EU’.[1] On a higher level of abstraction, the plausibility of the Court’s reasoning also depends on the view one has of the EU in general: is it an autonomous constitutional order based on the protection of fundamental rights and certain foundational values? Or should the EU demonstrate more openness towards other international law regimes, as it is just one such regime among others? Depending on the view one has over these two intertwined general questions, Achmea can either appear as a logical corollary of EU constitutionalism or as a breach of the EU’s commitment to the international rule of law.

What this blogpost strives to do is to take issue with the Court’s understanding that arbitral tribunals interpret and apply EU law in ways that pose a threat to its autonomy. The point is not to argue that the Court’s reasoning and conclusions are incorrect, but to shed light on the ways in which arbitral tribunals have actually ‘used’ EU law, and to show that the Court’s understanding (with which most commentators sympathize) that investment arbitration poses a threat to the autonomy of EU law is somewhat inflated. Continue reading →

The European Law Blog will be taking a summer recess. We’ll be back end of August with new commentaries, including on key Summer developments. Please do send us on your contributions throughout this period and we will get back to you in due course. Happy Holidays to all our readers!

By Oliver Garner

Introduction

An impasse in Brexit negotiations exists between the United Kingdom and the European Union regarding the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union. This post will consider the legal viability of a proposed solution to this stalemate: a joint EU-UK court to adjudicate upon citizens’ rights. Although the proposals have limited the substantive remit of such a potential court to citizens’ rights, due to this area being the most contentious between the EU and the UK, in principle one could envisage a joint court with jurisdiction over all aspects of the withdrawal agreement. It may be argued that such a solution would be politically unacceptable for the European Union as it allows the United Kingdom to “have its cake and eat it” through a substitute for the Court of Justice over which the withdrawing state has far more influence. However, this post will focus on the legal rather than political viability of the proposal. This post will consider the proposal with a particular focus on whether the joint court could violate the Court of Justice’s stringent conditions for protecting the autonomy of the EU legal order. A comparison will be drawn to the similar proposals for an EEA court in the original EEA agreement, and the eventually established EFTA court. Finally, beyond the United Kingdom’s withdrawal, the post will move on to consider whether the idea of a joint national and European court could provide a solution to the problems that arise from the unique composite nature of the EU legal order. Continue reading →

Last Thursday, the leaders of the Belgian federal government and the regional and community governments reached a compromise deal over the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). One of the key outcomes is that the Belgian federal government will seek the Opinion of the European Court of Justice on the compatibility of the Investment Court System (ICS) in Chapter Eight of CETA with the Treaties. As soon as the Belgian federal government makes the request for an Opinion, the Court will be able to express itself on this contentious legal issue. In this post, I will provide some background on the origins of the Walloon request before explaining why ICS could potentially pose a legal problem for the EU.

Wallonia’s longstanding resistance against CETA and the resolution of 25 April of 2016

To insiders, the resistance put up by Wallonia in particular should have been no surprise. Over the past few years, the Walloon and Brussels parliaments have had extensive debates on the merits of CETA and have been increasingly critical of the deal. One of the main and more principled sources of opposition was the inclusion of ICS in CETA, a judicial mechanism that allows foreign investors to sue governments over a breach of investor rights contained in the agreement. Continue reading →

As is becoming a tradition with our blog (albeit a bit late this year), we present to you our top 10 most read posts of the last year. We have had another good year of blogging behind us: more readers contributing to the content of the blog with 33 posters coming from approximately 14 different countries this year. Equally important is that readership is steadily increasing according to Google Analytics (plus: we now have almost 1600 email subscribers and 2400 followers on twitter). Most of you are from the UK, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Italy, Sweden, France, Ireland and Poland, respectively.

Keeping in mind that there is a certain bias in favour of older posts which have had more time to become popular, this is the 2015 list of most read posts of the year: Continue reading →

When is the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU applicable to a Member State measure? In C-446/12 – 449/12 Willems the CJEU held that a Member State which stores and uses fingerprint data, originally collected in compliance with Regulation No 2252/2004, but which the Member State then uses for purposes other than those stipulated in the Regulation, is not acting within the scope of EU law, and therefore is not bound by the Charter. This case appears to indicate a retreat by the Court from the expansive interpretation of the scope of application of the Charter which it had previously laid down in C-617/10 Fransson. Continue reading →

The present contribution is a translated and somewhat simplified version of an article that appeared in German on 23 March 2015 in the Swiss legal online-journal Jusletter. The authors thank the Jusletter for their kind permission to republish the article and Markus Kern and the European Law Blog’s editorial team for valuable comments on earlier versions.

Readers of this blog will nearly inevitably already have been confronted with this decision. The reactions to the Court’s Opinion have been vivid, to say the least. What did the Court say exactly on this draft agreement for accession to the ECHR? And is the current predominantly negative reaction (see for an exception here) justified? The main aim of the present post is to provide a concise summary of the Court’s findings, but also to provide some early assessment and criticism of the reactions on particular points. After a brief historical introduction to the context of the Opinion, we follow the sequence of analysis of the Court and thus examine in turn:

the arguments of the Court on the autonomy of the EU legal order;

the monopoly on dispute settlement established by Article 344 TFEU;

the co-respondent mechanism;

the procedure for the prior involvement of the CJEU and the specific characteristics of EU law concerning judicial review in matters of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

At the time of writing, EU scholars and lawyers are still eagerly awaiting the Court’s verdict on the compatibility of the EU/ECHR Accession Agreement with the Union Treaties (Opinion 2/13 is to be delivered on 18 December 2014 and hopes are high that accession may proceed as smoothly as possible and without any major amendments to the agreement). In the meantime – pre-Christmas stress allowing – I can only recommend the latest academic contribution to this topic, a volume co-edited by Vasiliki Kosta, Nikos Skoutaris and Vassilis P. Tzevelekos, concisely entitled The EU Accession to the ECHR (Hart Publishing, 2014). Even though the issue of the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is almost as old as the Union itself, this book aptly brings the debate again to the spotlight and discusses the intricate nitty-gritties of this historically unprecedented step in a clear and precise manner. And whatever the outcome of Opinion 2/13 might be, human rights in Europe undoubtedly form part and parcel of the European ‘constitutional’ public order – a development to which the case law of the Court of Justice and the entry into force of the Charter of Fundamental Rights have successfully contributed. Accession remains the missing building block in the edifice of European human rights law, which is intended to close the last gaps in the protection of individual rights by subjecting the EU and its institutions to the external supervision of the European Court of Human Rights. Thus, as the editors correctly state, ‘the post-accession order will be structured on a vertical basis confirming that the last say in human rights will rest with the Strasbourg Court’ (p. 4). Continue reading →

The European Law Blog aims to highlight, and comment on, current developments in EU case law and legislation. Our posts are short comments on judgments and legislation and are intended for anyone who wishes to stay informed on EU law. We hope you will enjoy our posts!